Sales is an ever-evolving landscape filled with opportunities and challenges. However, it’s also a profession that can be learned no matter your background.
Before starting my first company back in Mexico, I worked in the marketing department, both in-company and in-agency. So when I had to learn sales, I got scared. But after several mistakes, lost prospects and no-show meetings, I got the hang of it.
So I decided to write this humble guide for you. Whether you are a seasoned sales professional or just beginning your journey in the sales world, or you are a business owner who needs to learn some tricks to kickstart growth, this guide is designed to help you navigate through the methodology that is designed around the buyer.
The inbound sales methodology can be effective on its own. Still, it also can be integrated into your current sales process, whether you are using another methodology like SPIN or Sandler.
Inbound sales also apply to any type of business and industry. No matter if it’s SaaS, e-commerce, FinTech, healthcare, or you name it. This methodology works because it adapts to how we buy.
The inbound sales methodology can be divided into four phases: Identify, Connect, Explore and Advise. Although each stage of the process deserves an in-depth article, in this guide we will focus on understanding the fundamentals, some key concepts and a fail-proof plan to get you started.
By the end of this guide you’ll be able to explain to your team what is inbound sales, what are the benefits of adding it to your sales process, and plan to start the next day.
What is Inbound Sales?
Inbound sales is a system that adapts to how people buy. This methodology was pioneered by HubSpot, a company specialising in CRM software.
Since this methodology proposes a change in the way of selling, let’s start by explaining what makes it different from outbound sales or legacy sales.
The traditional sales method or outbound sales tactics treat every prospect the same. They send a generic message to everyone, making no distinction between whether the people are buying or not. They always focus on the sale rather than the buyer.
And this is not limited to the channel. Whether it is a cold call, a cold email, or a message to connect on LinkedIn, the approach is the same: there is no personalization and no contextualization of the people reaching out.
Let’s be clear on something, inbound sales is not against outreaching to people, in fact the methodology involves social selling as a tactic to connect with prospects. The error lies in the way the outreach is performed.
In other words, inbound sales is about building a relationship, based on trust, with the person, no matter if they are ready to buy or even if they are willing to buy from us.
And that last part is a tough pill to swallow. Even if the prospect does not buy from us, the inbound sales professional will provide so much value in the buying process that the lead will recognize them as a thought leader, a trustworthy company and might even recommend us to someone who might be a better fit for our business.
Let’s jump into the first stage in the inbound sales methodology: Identify.
Understanding Inbound Sales: Identify
The first part of the inbound sales methodology is about knowing which contacts are in buying mode and who are not. To make things more interesting, there are active and passive buyers. In other words, those who are actively looking for a solution and those who have a problem but are not yet aware that they need a solution for it
From the buyer’s perspective, this translates to the Awareness stage in the inbound marketing methodology. You have a challenging issue with your current solution and need to find a solution to fix it.
What makes the inbound sales methodology interesting is correctly identifying those who are experiencing the problem your business solves and those who may have it but are not yet aware of the benefits of solving it.
From this point, you can develop a plan depending on the channel that generates most of your prospects. If it’s an inbound channel like your website, using content and the right triggers can help you identify the active buyers from the passive ones.
But if you rely primarily on outbound channels, researching is the most important tactic your sales team must use.
Let’s look at a couple of examples in this video.
In summary
The Identify stage of the inbound sales methodology in an inbound scenario
- Proactively follow up with contacts who interact with your content and website.
- Research the company’s context and triggers.
- Personalize the outreach message.
The Identify stage of the inbound sales methodology in an outbound scenario
- Research the company’s context.
- Research the people that match your customer personas.
- Identify triggers that might suggest the company and the persona are experiencing the problematic your business solves.
- Craft personalized and contextualized outreach messages.
Understanding Inbound Sales: Connect
The next stage on the inbound sales methodology is all about building the relationship with the contact you want to engage with. Also, this part is where the rules of sales maths apply: volume.
Now this does not strictly mean that you need to outreach to 100 prospects a day or to send 100 messages to your contacts for the methodology to work.
What this means is that once you have a proven process with the right messages, number of activities and cadence, you can trust that your conversions in the system will deliver the right input. In plain math, if your outreach sequence converts 10% to exploratory meetings, then no matter if you reach out to 20 or 200 contacts you will get 2 and 20 meetings respectively.
Now the secret is turning 2% into 20% conversion rate is how well you connect with your prospects. And in order to do that you’ll need sales content and context.
In marketing the motto content is king has been for quite a while now, but what sets apart two good pieces of content is the context where that content is leveraged. So following the marketing motto, where content is king, context is queen.
And with sales there’s no exception. In fact, one activity to start planning is how your marketing and sales teams can start working together in creating the right pieces of content that are helpful for the sales team to connect with prospects.
So what is context in the Connect phase of the inbound sales methodology? Well, there are many frameworks for that, but will start with a critical one: the lead prioritization matrix.
Let’s review the Lead Prioritization Matrix on this video
In summary
The Connect stage of the inbound sales methodology
- Brings context to every contact interaction.
- Leverages existing content to provide value in the buyer’s journey.
- Uses frameworks to prioritize prospects that match your Ideal Client Profile and Customer Personas.
Understanding Inbound Sales: Explore
The explore phase of the inbound sales methodology is about finding out if the contact and your company are a good match.
To accomplish this, it’s important that not only your sales team but all your organisation has a clear understanding of two key concepts: your Ideal Client/Account Profile and the Customer Personas.
The Ideal Client Profile (ICP) or the Ideal Account Profile (IAP), the latter more used in B2B scenarios, is a description of the most looked characteristics of a prospect within a customer segment; this can be either demographic or firmographic data.
On the other hand, the Customer Persona, or also known as buyer persona, is a semi-fictional description of the people that fits into those demographics/firmographics and has a role in the buying process. For B2B scenarios, the customer personas are part of the buying committee and may own or share the decision-making process with others.
So when we dive into the Explore phase of our inbound sales process we need to keep in mind that the only goal for the following calls and meetings is to identify at what stage of the buying process our prospect is and who else is involved in the decision.
Again, the only goal is to identify where they are at the buying process.
Sounds boring? Maybe you are thinking why not go all in and get the sale ASAP? Well, for one, from the buyer’s perspective, we are trying to understand if the solution we offer solves the problem they have. And two, from the sales team’s perspective, we want our reps to spend their time more efficiently on prospects that are more likely to convert to new clients. And this has a direct effect on a low or high conversion in the sales pipeline.
How long will the Explore stage of the inbound sales methodology last? That will depend on the sales cycle of your business.
To get the most out of the Explore phase, we will use different tactics and assets to uncover if company and prospect are a good match. Let’s review each on this video.
In summary
The Explore stage of the inbound sales methodology
- The goal is to determine whether your company is a good match for the prospect and whether your prospect is a good match for your company.
- Uses active listening and rapport-building techniques to build trust with the prospect.
- Focuses on translating the pain-points into insights to elaborate a deal-winning presentation.
Understanding Inbound Sales: Advice
The final part of the inbound sales methodology is about creating value and helping the prospect to buy. Keep in mind that they may end up not buying from you.
This stage also experiences the most rejection among team members of companies with a long background of legacy selling.
“What if they take what they’ve learned from us and go to our competitor?” – If that’s the case then they are not a good match for your company; we want clients to stay with us the longest time possible (think Customer Lifetime Value).
“Maybe they are one of our competitors spying on us?” – Really? How many times a day do you spend spying on your competitors? If you are buried on tasks and projects, so is your competitor! Unless your competition has a special task force dedicated to visiting your website and speaking with your sales reps to steal your methods, then worry, or not, just brag that they are so bad that they copied from you.
You get the idea. The advice stage is about helping the prospect make a buying decision. At the beginning it might seem impossible to see the value it creates in helping others make a purchase, but in the long run, it will build trust and respect for your sales reps and your company.
In addition, it will also be the best marketing tool you’ll have when these prospects start referring their peers and friends, and if they do not see value in the solution they choose first, maybe they’ll return to buy from you.
The more we use the Internet and emerging technologies in our buying journeys, the more relevant it is for Marketing, Sales and Service teams to create memorable customer experiences that will help you differentiate from any competitor.
What tactics should you be using in the Advice stage, let’s go over those in the following video.
In summary
The Advice stage of the inbound sales methodology
- Focuses on helping the prospect make a buying decision, even if it means not buying from you.
- By the time you reach this stage, your sales reps will be recognized as thought-leaders in their field and as a trusty source to consult. You can leverage this trust to ask for a referral.
- Creating value and knowing when might be the right time to go back and explore if now is the right moment to move forward.
Difference Between Inbound Sales and Outbound Sales
At this point we can say that: Inbound Sales and Outbound Sales are two distinct approaches, but are not against each other, and they can co-exist together.
The inbound sales system focuses on identifying the potential customers that are in buying mode and delivering value and helping on the buying process.
On the other hand, the outbound sales system heavily relies on reaching out to prospects through cold calls and emails, but should be used with the right message and context.
In the following table, we’ll see how to turn unwanted cold outbound sales tactics into warm inbound sales tactics.
| Outbound Sales Tactic | Inbound Sales Tactic |
| Cold calling or emailing. | Reaching out to prospects that already know your company or product/service. |
| Traveling to meet new prospects. | Remote meetings (inside sales). |
| Delivering sales presentations. | Taking the time to contextualize and personalize your sales presentation for each prospect. |
| Talking about product benefits. | Showing how your product/service might be a good solution. |
| Following up on every lead. | Personalize and adapt your cadence. |
| Handling objections by the book. | Using active listening to find out what’s the motivation behind the objection. |
| Closing the sale before your deadline. | Identify the timeline of their purchase and the factors influencing the decision. |
| Being a pushy sales rep. | Acting as a consultant and thought leader. |
| Avoid talking about your competitors. | Understanding your competitors’ solution, their pros and cons, and how you differentiate. |
Key Concepts in Inbound Sales
At this point, I hope you are feeling pretty confident about the inbound sales methodology.
I will dedicate the following lines to list and summarise some of the concepts we’ve covered so far. Feel free to skip over this section and jump into the next.
Ideal Client Profile / Ideal Account Profile: the demographics/firmographic and situational characteristics your target customer must have.
Customer Persona / Buyer Persona: the ideal profile of each person involved in the buying decision.
Customer’s/Buyer’s Journey: the milestones your ideal customer goes through from the moment they become aware of the problem to the moment they realize and gain value out of your solution.
Buying Process: the stages involved in the decision-making process to buy the solution. In complex scenarios like B2B involves more than one person, referred to as the buying committee.
Sales Content: every bit of information that will help your prospect in the buying process also and will enable your sales team to sell better.
Lead Nurturing: delivering your sales/marketing content to the prospects that are not yet ready to buy.
Active listening: a communication technique that helps you better understand your prospects buying motivations. It considers the words and non-verbal cues to better understand their message.
Lead Qualification Matrix: a framework that helps you qualify and prioritize leads based on their fit to the ICP/IAP and buying behaviour.
Setting Up Your Inbound Sales Process
Now that we understand the concepts of inbound sales methodology, it’s time to put all the pieces together into version 1 of the inbound sales process.
Yep v1. The sales process is just a cog in the inbound methodology, and as your company evolves into a customer-centric powerhouse, you’ll need to revisit your sales process every now and then. I recommend that you do so every quarter and a big yearly update according to how your team grows and how many new products/solutions you add to your offering.
To help you get started, I’ve created a sample Inbound Sales Process that has all the key elements highlighted in this guide. Download your copy on this link.
Want to start from scratch? Follow these steps.
- Review with your management team the strategic customer segments and sources of revenue and select one for your inbound sales strategy.
- Build the Ideal Client Profile or Account Profile if you are a B2B business.
- Sit down with the customer-facing teams to build the customer personas and customer journey.
- With the sales team develop the lead qualification matrix.
- Gather all the content you have available and identify where it creates more value in the customer journey. If you don’t have content, allocate the resources to create it.
- Train your team on the methodology and define what success looks like.
- Set goals and key performance indicators.
- Review, train, optimize, repeat.
Pro tip: If you are starting from zero into inbound sales, I recommend a pilot test with one product/service, take the learning and iterate and move to another.
Key Metrics to Track with Inbound Sales
Before naming any metric related to sales performance, always consider that every business is different and should have its own very metrics to track.
We can all fall into the temptation of knowing how we perform compared to the industry average, but we should always be looking into what are our benchmarks and how we get better.
With that in mind, step numero uno is to review past results and set a baseline.
The big difference inbound sales is creating is how we approach the sales process, so the focus should be on the conversion rate at each stage of the sales pipeline and the number of referrals we get from prospects.
I’ll provide an example of this.
Let’s say your pipeline is divided into 4 main stages: Discovery, Presentation, Negotiation, and Closed.
When you apply the concepts of inbound sales and personalize each demo you do to your prospects, the likelihood they move on to the next stage will be higher; in other words, the conversion rate will be better.
Also, if you build a good relationship with your prospect and build trust, why not ask for a referral? If they had a great experience and you helped them make a purchase decision, they might tell their peers about it. In the B2B scenario, people change jobs, with a job well done they’ll remember you and go back when needed.
Conclusion
The inbound sales system is a game-changing approach for your business, your sales team and your prospects and customers.
We shift from the old ways of selling the same to everyone who crosses our eyes, to dedicating the time to understand buying motivations and personalising each interaction to create value.
By creating a memorable experience in the buying journey, our sales team will be able to position themselves as trusted partners that bring new business from customers with a higher lifetime value.
Unlock Your Sales Potential: Discover the Power of Inbound
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FAQs on Inbound Sales
The inbound sales methodology is not the same as the sales funnel or pipeline.
Your sales funnel is just an illustration of the different stages your prospects move through from leads to new customers.
The inbound sales methodology is how you approach that journey in the pipeline.
Inbound sales focus on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content and interactions, rather than outbound methods. This approach can transform your business by aligning sales processes with customer needs, leading to higher engagement, trust, and ultimately, sales conversions.
Internet has changed the way we buy or search for solutions and products. Your customers are already researching to find a solution to their everyday needs. The inbound sales methodology meets customers in their journey, providing value and solutions to their problems, making it crucial for staying competitive and relevant.
Start by defining your target customer personas, then align your content and sales processes to the buyer’s journey. Train your sales team on inbound principles and leverage CRM tools to nurture leads effectively through personalized interactions.
CRM systems are foundational, enabling tracking and nurturing of leads through the sales funnel. Additionally, email automation, social media tools, and analytics platforms are essential for executing a comprehensive inbound sales strategy.
Common challenges include a lack of alignment between sales and marketing, resistance to change, and difficulty in content creation. Overcome these by fostering collaboration between departments, providing training, and adopting a content strategy aligned with customer needs.
Start by gathering information from your customer-facing teams. You’ll be surprised about how much value there is in a single email to the Customer Service team or a routine call of a sales rep. Use your CRM to store this knowledge. Segment your audience for targeted communications and tailor your content and outreach to address different customer groups’ specific needs and interests.
Trends include the increasing use of AI and machine learning for data analysis and personalised experiences, the integration of video content into sales processes, and a greater focus on customer success as a sales driver.
After implementing inbound sales, you’ll likely see higher engagement from more informed and interested prospects, shorter sales cycles due to better alignment with customer needs, and improved customer retention rates. This approach fosters a customer-centric culture, driving sustainable growth.